Here’s How Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital Is Boosting Quality Of Care For Their Residents

Being one of Singapore’s oldest healthcare organisations, Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital (KWSH) has grown to provide a vast range of services for their clients and residents. And it was thanks to these years of experience that KWSH realised they could manage most of their residents onsite without hospitalisation.

When KWSH came to know that the Ministry of Health (MOH) was doing a review on how chronic sick patients in community hospitals could be cared for in nursing homes, KWSH worked closely with MOH and set out to launch new wards that have the capacity to provide clinical service for this group of residents requiring long-term institutionalised care, some with complex interventions.

Introducing KWSH’s New Wards

KWSH launched four new wards, with a total of 128 beds, comprising 120 beds and eight isolation beds. These wards have the capacity to cater to residents with care needs that cannot be managed in a general nursing home ward. Such residents have medical condition(s) with long-term complications and require regular and long-term supportive and nursing care. For example, a majority of the tracheostomy residents in the wards have brain lesions and loss of motor or cognitive functions, which require a heightened level of care.

This requirement for a higher level of care has to be matched with a higher level of knowledge and skills among the staff. Prior to the operationalisation of the new wards, KWSH ensured their staff working in the ward would be able to care for these groups of residents:

• Those with disabilities and poor potential for recovery
• Those who require nursing support around the clock, and occasional medical support
• Those who need Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis (CAPD)
• Those with uncuffed tubes that require tracheostomy/oral suctioning at least four to five times per day
• Those who need frequent wound care, where it requires daily care of all wounds
• Those who require oxygen ventilation support

To do so, the staff underwent specialised competency training in areas such as:

• Tracheostomy management
• Nursing care for residents on non-invasive ventilator
• Nursing management of residents with CAPD
• Nursing care for residents on Outpatient Parental Antibiotics Therapy via peripherally Inserted Central Catheter

This level of specialised care for residents will also help to build trust between the residents and the care team. The KWSH staff had to also learn how to manage and care for these patients.

With these new wards and a higher level of skills among the staff, KWSH aims to provide their residents with a seamless transition of care.

About Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital

Founded in 1910 by a group of Cantonese merchants who wanted to provide poor immigrants with free medical services, KWSH is one of Singapore’s oldest charitable healthcare institutions. Despite being a charitable organisation that is heavily dependent on public support and donations, Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital remains focused on providing quality care and services to their clients and residents. They serve thousands of clients every month with their inpatient services, rehabilitation centre, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Centre, community care centres and home care services.